|Spargus|

Valentine soon found out that winning in the arena, although commendable, had its own complications if you didn't do it the way most people did it. Right now she found herself in Damos' throne room, sitting near the water stream. A few meters further Damos was sitting on his throne, surrounded by several important citizens who all had something to say about her win.

'… highly unconventional, not to mention the kind of precedent this sets for future fights. What if other people also find out how to hack the Eco flows in the Arena?' the Arena manager complained, gripping a board with several calculations in his hands. Tall and lanky, he had Valentine wondering how he had been able to get through his own trials.

'This infection with Eco is an abomination at the very best, even if we disregard the potential consequences to your customs.' Seem added, her strange outfit glowing in the room. It was probably just a matter of time before she once again suggested that Valentine be given 'eternal rest' or something just as disagreeable.

'Even if you lot start talking about things like 'fair play' or use fancy words like the monk here-' Kleiver started, waving a hand towards Seem who tried to pretend she didn't see the man. '- fact is the kid still won. I say it doesn't matter how she wins, as long as she wins.' Getting supported by Kleiver was a course of action Valentine hadn't been expecting.

Damos let his eyes survey the room slowly, pausing for a moment on the reason for all of this unrest. Valentine didn't avert her gaze, looking straight back at the man that was in all respects her leader. Meta sensed the unrest in the room, sharpening her claws on a rock in the water as she let out distressed noises. Seem threw the Metal Head another disdained look. It appeared the Precursor Monk was still deciding which of them she hated the most.

'Do you have anything to say in your defense?' Damos asked her, resting his head on his hand, gripping his strange staff with the other. He was clearly bothered with the situation, though it was unclear because he felt like the sanctity of the Arena was defiled or because an useful asset was being questioned. Probably a bit of both.

Valentine looked around the room, blowing some hair out of her face as she did so. 'I just did what I was ordered to do. I did not take any weapon with me inside the Arena, only my body. I did not hack the Arena – which would have been quite hard since there is no way for me to hardwire anything without tearing the entire Arena open. All I did was use my body, and the potential in it.'
She refused to call the Dark Eco in her body a curse in this company. Despite the fact that Seem would probably agree with her, none of the others would probably take too kindly to her being disdainful towards what they would consider a great source of power.

'Show them pain… just attack and taste blood… no questions… no complications…' And now that she had somehow lifted some of the pressure inside of her, she now had to deal with It being back.

'That seems to be the main problem here.' Damos said, leaning back in his seat. 'She cannot turn off this power of hers, nor would it be advisable to do so. A warrior needs all of their skills.'

The Arena manager threw his hands in the air in despair. 'Even if that is so, my King, there is no way I can allow her in the Arena again. Any Trial would be highly unfair, considering she is able to remove the ground from under the feet of whoever we send in there.' He looked at Valentine with a look that wasn't hostile, but rather impressed and wary.

The arguing continued, with Seem strongly against her staying in the city – on religious grounds, not on personal ones, as if that was a comfort –, the Arena manager who was against it for the reason that she would have an unfair advantage and Kleiver who seemed to be all for throwing her in the Arena with as many Marauders they could get their hands on. Somehow even the latter suggestion seemed to be not as helpful as Kleiver probably meant it.

Finally Damos held up a hand, clearly wanting to be done with this as soon as possible. 'If we cannot test her in the Arena, there are other ways to see if she had the necessary skills to be one of us. Valentine.' He turned to her, gesturing for her to stand up. She complied, Meta coming to lie next to her standing companion.

'You told me that Praxis was sending you to a facility in the desert for further testing.' The way he spoke clearly indicated he wasn't asking her a question, but instead clarifying matters for the other people in the room. 'It would seem to me that there would be a great many amount of enemies in that place. If she were to incapacitate that facility, she would be proving us a favour, and that would be enough for her to earn a second part of her citizenship.'

Damos looked around the room again, waiting for people to argue or agree with him. The Arena master was the first one to agree with Damos, muttering something about it not being in the Arena and therefore acceptable for him. Kleiver seemed to be mostly sorry that he wouldn't be able to actually see her go nuts in that place, but he agreed as well. Seem seemed to be least inclined to agree, but she couldn't say no without looking petty.

Finally Damos nodded to her. He didn't expect her to say anything. All that was necessary was that she would do as told. And she would.

|Haven|

Jak wiped away his hair from his eyes. He was drenched in sewage water, courtesy of the men he had to escort through the sewers. You'd think that people who worked for Krew would be more able to defend themselves, but apart from some lucky shots they had done very little to defend themselves.

At least he had Daxter to watch his back, literally. Not for the first time he thought that having Valentine here would have made his life easier. For one, she didn't constantly badger him to constantly go on missions. He missed her gentle way of urging him to take a day off every once in a while. With a sigh he realized they had never gone on that pick nick like she had wanted.

He shot one of the larger Metals that had attempted to take a bite out of Jinx, the bomb expert, all the while trying to avoid become drenched in Metal blood. The animals growled as they came closer, ignoring fallen comrades as they seemed intent on getting to Jak. There was an intent in their movements that belied the stupidity people usually granted them. Valentine had sad that they possessed a Hive mind. If that was true, then they were probably following orders from the Metal King.

Jinx clapped him on the back. 'Thanks Goldilocks. I'll just get a little blast going here and then we're almost there.'

Jak suppressed a snarl. If anything he had wanted to stop working for Krew, but there was the thing with having some new weapon upgrades. Krew had become more sorely needed than ever as their weapon supplier the long the situation in Haven held up.

He resisted the force of the explosion, going ahead to check for more enemies. Daxter's claws in his shoulder felt reassuring, a reminder that his best friend was still with him. He'd never noticed it before, but the sewers felt a lot like the dungeons Praxis had kept him in. Damp, smelly and hopeless. Perhaps he could consider the sewers an upgrade, seeing as how he would be allowed to get out of here.

His hand traced the picture he had of Valentine in his breast pocket for a moment, painfully aware of how her knife was hidden in his boot. Living with the Eco was only a fraction harder than living with the knowledge he had failed her. If it hadn't been for the message she had gotten through to Vin they would still not have known that she was alive. That she was safe. Hopefully she was somewhere surrounded by books and computers, that would make her happiest.

|The Wasteland, Two Weeks Later|

Valentine looked at the scientific stronghold below her. The metal building was hidden in a valley in the Wasteland, so far away from Spargus there was no way a car would ever get here. But a single woman with a Metal Scout and sufficient supplies apparently stood a good chance.

She offered Meta the last part of her lizard jerky before gushing her full mouth down with some warm water. They were seated in a shady spot, to keep from giving away their position to the enemy by some sort of accident. It was a possibility after all, Valentine thought to herself as she watched Meta seated next to her. The Metal Head was lounging on the rock next to her, seemingly observing the valley with as much interest as her friend.
These past few weeks Meta had been displaying more and more signs that she was reaching adulthood. The only reliable clue Valentine had were the lighter blue markings that had been blotching across her otherwise impeccable camouflage. Not that dark and light greens were such great camouflage in a desert where the only green came from a lonely cactus every few hundred yards.

She ran her hand carefully across her arms, trying to see if there was a spot where she had somehow missed to properly close the small metal locks. She missed her wrist computer, even though it was useless in Spargus. Once she had been allowed to roam the city she had soon found out that apart from the Arena there was very little technology to be found. Expect guns and cars. Everybody there had guns, and everybody knew how to drive a car. Which made her the odd one out again.

She tapped Meta on the shoulder once, giving the Metal Head the sign that it was time to move. They had been watching the facility for half a day now, resting up and trying to see if there was something special going on. But they would have to take care of this facility sooner or later, and Valentine wouldn't get any better at killing if she just sat there.

Attack. Kill. Feel better if we could just kill something.

Of course It had to pipe in concerning that specific thought. With an inaudible growl she swung her leg across Meta's back, laying her hands across her friend's neck to avoid getting thrown off. Once they were up in the sky, Valentine quickly put on her dark goggles to avoid going nearly blind from the sun. Up here there were thankfully no gouts of wind carrying sand through every opening it could find.

She needed no words to tell Meta where she had to go. The bond that had been forged between them – Valentine strongly suspected it was because the 'cure' she had injected herself with had been made from her blood – allowed the Metal Head to divine where it was that Valentine wanted to go.

They landed on top of the landing pad building. Valentine quickly got off, slipping the knife she had gotten out of the armory from her soft leather boots. There were several others hidden on her body, a precaution she had to take since she had refused to take a hand gun.
She looked down on the landing pad. There had only been one guard the entirety of the day, and there had been a change of men twenty minutes ago. The man was dressed in the Krimzon suit, but had made the mistake of not wearing a helmet due to the heat. She couldn't blame him for wanting to enjoy a breeze. But she could not allow him to live either.

She dropped down from the roof, her knife plunging in his throat, cutting through his vocal cords. The man gurgled, trying to grip at his assailant as he felt to the ground. After Mihko – the Arena manager – had seen how bad she was with guns in general, he had forced her to undergo some sort of guarilla warfare training, deciding hand-to-hand combat would be more her forte. Valentine wiped the knife on her wrist band, ignoring the satisfied murmurs from It in her head. Meta landed next to her on the ground.

'You sure you want to come inside with me?' she asked her partner. Meta snorted, trotting towards the door. Valentine muttered something that sounded a lot like 'overgrown, smart-ass lizard' before following after her. As she had suspected, defense from here was laughable. People never expected their enemy to be able to approach them through the air without knowing about it first.

Inside the temperature was discernibly cooler, sending a chill down Valentine's spine. Despite her dislike for the desert heat, she had started to prefer it over artificial coolness. Meta's claws clicked softly on the steel floors, which was soon mediated with the Metal Head figured out that retracting her nail made the noise go away. Before moving further than the initial corridor, Valentine took a short pause to look around.

One camera, at the end of the right hallway. Laughable and lax. No matter how sure people were they wouldn't get attacked, some better security had never killed anyone. At least, not until now.
Valentine placed a hand against the wall. From the moment they had entered she had felt the surge of Eco throughout the building. As she focused on the way the Eco was being guided throughout the building, she could feel how things had been constructed. If she had had the time and desire, she would have been able to figure out how the entire building had been built-up just by studying the Eco. For now, she focused on something else.

She soon found the sentry bots. There were none on this floor, but the lower she went the more she could detect. Without a computer near she wouldn't be able to reconfigure their targeting parameters, but as things were now, there were other things she could do.
First she activated what felt like the fire alarm. Although red lights did start flickering, with a robotic voice asking everyone in the building to stay calm, there was no spray of water. Another alarm, apparently. The most important thing was that for now people would probably be filing in the corridors, making themselves vulnerable for the sentry guns.

She activated those next. She could feel the familiar flex, she knew the guns turned on but the way this building was designed there was no sound audible. Meta stood next to her as she worked, keeping a vigilant eye. Valentine waited for a minute, before flexing the flow of Eco again.

As she started walking, Meta followed, claws once again clicking on the floor. She didn't get far however, as before she reached the stairs down a group of people in lab coats emerged escorted by two Guards.
'Subject alpha!' one of the women in the group gasped, pointing a finger at Valentine.

At that name Valentine narrowed her eyes. Before the Guards had been able to ready their guns Meta had already jumped into the fray, tackling one of the armored men to the ground. This distracted his comrade enough for Valentine to follow the Metal Head's example, plunging a knife in the place where helmet connected to armor.

The scientists had obviously decided from the evidence that running was in their best interest. This was counting without Meta, who rushed through the narrow corridor, throwing them all to the ground as she moved in front of their route. Valentine followed, not bothering to clean her knife between cut throats. The woman who had recognized her as the intended Subject Alpha was the last one left alive, caught between two predators. She fell to her knees, pleading. 'No, you can't do this. You're not like this!'

Valentine paused for a moment. 'I'm not?'
'No!' the woman answered her. 'The psychological report show that between you and Subject Beta, you are the one who is most merciful and balanced despite longer infection. Following those facts, you should not be doing this.'

Valentine let out a throaty chuckle at that statement. 'I'm sorry, but recent events have made me a little less forgiving than your initial data. I believe your employer labeled me 'a tough, stubborn bitch'.'
Those were all the words she needed to convey her feelings, planting her dagger in the woman's chest as almost an afterthought.

After Jak's betrayal, after arriving in Spargus, she had seen the need to become stronger, less forgiving. Meta lead the way, sniffing out stray scientists and guards who had managed to survive the sudden activation of the sentry guns.

Valentine's only moment of indecision was when she came to a subject room. When she entered the room, she had been confronted with a large space filled with cages. The sounds of angered Metal Heads, in every shape and size she knew of and a few others she had never even imagined, were almost overpowering.

She sucked the inside of her cheek, trying to decide what to do with these. Leaving them here to starve would be too cruel, but a look on the uneasy Meta next to her was enough to decide that perhaps killing them was not the best method either.

Finally she decided to stop near one of the smaller ones, looking at Meta sternly. 'If they attack me, I get to kill them. Understood?'
Meta let out some whines, shaking her head back and forth at the sight of her kin in cages.
With a sigh Valentine unleashed the Metal Head. It seemed to be a baby Grunt, one of the basic Metal Head types. It came out of the cage hesitantly, not attacking her, but not fleeing away either.

With a deep resentment, Valentine continued to open up cages. Some of the more adult animals growled and snarled at her, but none of them made a move to attack them. Finally she had them all out, and found herself looking at a room of Metal Heads who didn't seem that ready to try and rip her throat out.

She held open one of the double doors, gesturing down the hallway with her knife. 'Well, go on. What are you waiting for, a written invitation?'
This was enough to send them out of the room, first slowly and finally in a stampede. Judging from the screams that followed, it seemed like they were taking revenge on their captors. Some of the larger ones halted for a moment near her, pushing their heads against her upper leg. The first one to do that nearly sent her into a shock, and the feeling didn't subside as it continued.

As Valentine watched the last ones depart, she imagined that this again might not have been the way she was supposed to win another Trial.